


Draco Under Glass

by George_Pushdragon



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-07-14
Updated: 2007-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:02:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24108685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/George_Pushdragon/pseuds/George_Pushdragon
Summary: After the war, Harry tries to live a simple life, performing odd jobs. Until the day Draco Malfoy walks into a slow evening at the Leaky. Behind his silver-framed spectacles, Malfoy looks like a new man, but has he really changed?
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Kudos: 13





	Draco Under Glass

Two years is long enough for the memory of a person to become blurred, details forgotten one by one until all that's left are impressions: a dominant feature such as a generous mouth or expressive hair, an impression of hardness or laughter or derision. Harry has not seen Draco Malfoy for well over three years when he walks into the Leaky Cauldron and finds him sitting alone at a corner table, bent slightly over a newspaper. 

What catches Harry's eye is a pleasing harmony of shape: jagged white hair, angular jaw, both heightened and softened by the elegant curve of his fine silver-rimmed glasses. His heart responds to the beauty of form first, and kicks, and he has stopped in the doorway before he recognises the face. Then he stares. Time slows. The sounds of the room recede to a great distance. It is Malfoy, unmistakably, but he is remade by the oval frames. They smooth out the sharpness of his cheekbones. They leave on him an incongruous air of vulnerability. He looks older, and stiller. By some miracle of geometry, the glasses draw attention to his mouth, which Harry watches helplessly as it stirs into a wry smile at some quirk in his reading. Above all, they are a Muggle affectation that hint at a complexity of character Malfoy certainly never possessed in his youth.

Harry sits, weak kneed. There are other clues to Malfoy's circumstances which he will not notice until very much later - the long fingers scratching distractedly at the tabletop and the tiny cup of coffee he must have got a taste for in his years in Turin. For now, though, all he sees is the glasses. His fingers itch as he imagines running them down the side of Malfoy's face, over smooth hair and smoother skin and the hard, delicate, surprising strand of silver. He imagines them in his own hand, warm with the heat of Malfoy's skin. He imagines Malfoy blinking dazedly without them and turning his unveiled eyes to Harry's. 

The glasses sweep aside his old impression of Malfoy. That night, in a hastily taken room in the Cauldron's attic, he learns a new one. 

**Harry behind glass**

After the war - although even "after the war" is someone else's phrase because in his own mind and looking back from safety, it had all ended far too quickly to be more than a series of cruel and pointless skirmishes. After the war-that-never-was, Harry makes a point of pleasing himself. 

He is not hard to please. He is satisfied with the perverse pleasure he gets from quietly but consistently defying expectations. The Order of Merlin he insisted on accepting in private is buried with Dumbledore. He turned down the offers from Hogwarts, but not in anger, and once or twice every year the students see him in the staff box at Quidditch matches, standing behind the Headmistress, his distinctive head very slightly stooped. He doesn't marry Ginny or move in with Ron. He shares a small house with a middle-aged wizard from Zurich who has come to be apprenticed to Ollivander, though according to rumour both occupants are so seldom in residence that even the ghouls in the attic complain of loneliness. 

What Harry does is mend things. Small things and simple things mostly, except for his first project, Grimmauld Place, which he spent five unbroken months on before Remus and Tonks took possession. He is not officially an odd-jobs-man; he has no business card and no box of tools apart from his rarely used wand. It's simply that there is a great deal that needs to be done. Every time he finishes a task - like a fortnight ago, when he accompanied Neville to the last meeting with the Gringotts managers to finalise the terms of the loan that would see Longbottom's Idiot-proof Potions translated and published across Europe - another one seeks him out. The ink was scarcely dry on the security deed when Hermione happened to mention the family of Nogtails that had colonised Muggle farms on Anglesea and started drawing unwanted attention to its tiny wizarding community. Harry never sends bills and during busy weeks his long, unhurried steps make his pockets jingle with the forgotten coins of those who insist on paying him unprompted.

On the day that Draco Malfoy comes back into his life, he has been painting. Truth be told, he has mostly been listening to Slughorn describe haphazard highlights from his teaching career and relive his one moment of glory facing off Fenrir Greyback. While Harry listened and laughed, reflecting Slughorn's own fond pleasure, he kept his breathing in time with the wet swish of the bristles. The skirting boards in short, brisk four/four strokes; the open flat surfaces a swirling waltz. There had been as much tea and pineapple lumps as genuine work, and during both Harry answered an inquisition which, he knew, was designed to elicit the sort of quotable details that would make for impressive repetition to other guests, on another far-off day. Slughorn lives in Exmoor now, too remote for casual visitors. His conversation may be becoming increasingly circular but he is not so old that touching up the living room walls would test his skill.

The return journey takes Harry close to Diagon, so he stops in at the Leaky for a pint. He is in no hurry to get home, where he knows he will find a note from Ron reminding him about the charity dinner in the evening. The note is necessary because, while Harry accepts invitations to official events with unfailing diplomacy, he has a shaky record of actually attending them. When pressed, he tends to appear with a wide smile and a set of dress robes chosen by Hermione, only to make one quick circuit of the gathered luminaries before disappearing into the kitchens to introduce himself to the house-elves or challenge the maitre d' to a game of chess. Tonight's charity dinner he thinks might be worth a visit. The most he could understand when Ron repeated Percy's grandiose invitation was that it involved children and awards and Muggle Studies. Harry laid out his dress robes this morning without having to be reminded. Children often say something worth listening to.

Harry ducks his head as he passes the end of Knockturn Alley. The cadets from the Prophet like to hang out in the seedy bars bored like wasp nests into the catacombs at its far end, and he'd just as soon avoid them tonight. The day's work has left him wearing a cloak of contentment, spun from Slughorn's gruff pleasure and the reassuring sweep of the brushwork. He wants to wear it longer.

As he slips through the crowd, he returns the occasional clinging glance with a curt smile, compensating with long strides so that no-one can expect him to stop. The boldest of them stare openly, as if he were a zoo exhibit which they never suspected of having the capacity to return their gaze. Harry lives his life behind glass like that. Necessity, however, has taught him how to bear it. He has learned to cultivate dimensions in his life that are hidden from his audience. He has learned always to hold something back, and so while he lets them see a slightly eccentric young man with a phoenix tattooed across the back of his wrist and ragged-cuffed jeans under the designer robe he always meant to send back to the shop that gave it to him, while he lets them tell his story until he no longer recognises himself beneath the blazing-eyed hero, he practises quiet acts of subversion. Though he cut a ribbon at the re-opening of the Wizengamot, he refuses to read anything about current affairs and every morning he carefully excises the Quidditch pages from his flatmate's copy of the Prophet. Ignoring dozens of invitations, the only club he has joined is Dobby's society for masterless house-elves. Through the Weasley twins, he is the principal stakeholder in a wholly illegal scheme to breed dwarf dragons for racing. 

And to get him through the weary predictability of enduring curious gazes in public places, he has taken to fancying men. Not any one man in particular, or even a type, but more the idea of men: hard-bodied and straightforward and forbidden. Beatifically, he returns the smiles of a mother and daughter strolling past, and imagines the long-haired man at the front counter of Fortescue's pressed so hard against him he can feel his heartbeat.

The Leaky is mostly empty, which is better than he'd hoped for on a Friday night. The barman with the greying ponytail gives his spare nod of welcome. The familiar scents of old wood and yeast come home to him; a good day becomes perfect. 

And then he looks over and sees Malfoy.

It is a falling into place. Like the last ingredient in a potion that makes it simmer with completion. But then it's as wholly unexpected as being introduced to the matchstick after a lifetime of muddling about in dissatisfaction imaging that the tinderbox was the height of technology. Desire is not the name for it, though there's a measure of that and it doesn't escape him that it is Malfoy's lips upon which his gaze finishes. What moves him is a sudden illumination, as if for the first time he could see the road stretching out beneath his feet, and for once it didn't bend towards darkness and loss. 

He suspects that a sensation so quickly and rashly formed is not to be trusted. But Harry has always preferred embracing the consequences to living with regret. Leaning on a stool by the bar, he watches as Malfoy obliviously turns his gaze to the opposite page, shifting about all the angles of his face and giving Harry a whole new vista. His face is actually more angular than in their schooldays, not less. It's only the effect of the frames that gives the impression of softness. He sits forward in his seat with his right forearm resting on the table - and this strikes Harry as different from the boy who draped his long arms over the backs of chairs as if to signify sovereignty over everything he touched. 

Harry is serenely confident as he crosses the room. There is no doubt in his mind about what will occur. The sudden strength of feeling in him is such that Malfoy can't fail to feel some shadow of it. As he reaches the table, Malfoy looks up with his mouth forming a smile. The sudden movement throws dancing light around the circumference of his lenses and his eyes look like they are shining.

**A handful of sand at two thousand degrees**

"Malfoy," Harry says in a warmer tone than he has ever used on that name before.

The smile vanishes. Malfoy stares, long and blank. Then his eyes flick over Harry's hair and clothes, as if picking out the paint flecks, and over the battered rucksack on his shoulder. He glances at the door and then, since Harry appears disinclined to move off, he draws his paper closed and says in a slightly more polished version of the old drawl: "What can I do for you?" 

And Harry has his first moment of doubt. The voice brings him to his senses. Reminds him that all the history between them probably looks just as unfriendly through a pair of silver glasses. As Malfoy looks up at him coldly with his lips small as a Knut, the old schoolboy urges creep over Harry like a fog: the anger, the humiliation and the urge to punch Malfoy in the mouth.

"Nothing," Harry manages to cough out as he fights down the stale emotion and swings his rucksack under the free chair. 

"And somehow you're still here," Malfoy observes distastefully, looking past Harry to the door. 

Harry finds himself shifting his weight from foot to foot and makes himself stop. Truth be told, if he'd hesitated to make any sort of plan, or even to ask himself exactly what he wanted with Malfoy, he might have lost his nerve. "Wait a minute." 

He comes back with two glasses of Bohemian firewhiskey, the most expensive drink in the house. He has never done this before and he doesn't want to mess it up. Besides, if the rumours at school about Malfoy and Blaise Zabini turn out to have been false, Malfoy might react badly to this tentative proposition. It would take an extreme level of homophobia, he thinks, to throw a five Galleon glass of firewhiskey in his face. 

"Still the same then," Malfoy observes sourly, as Harry sits opposite him. "The great Harry Potter stumbles in uninvited and assumes that everybody else will accommodate him."

Harry, who had deduced from the newspaper that Malfoy was alone, tenses right up to his top ribs and finds himself rising slightly from his seat. "Is someone sitting here?"

As Malfoy watches him, evaluating, the possibilities tangle in Harry's brain. My boyfriend. My girlfriend. My wife. He holds Malfoy's gaze, noting absently how his eyes, habitually narrowed out of scorn or spite or the pressure of light on his pale irises, look much clearer and brighter behind the lenses. 

"No," Malfoy finally snaps. "But that doesn't-"

"Good," Harry says very quickly. "Do you mind if I do?"

He pushes one of the glasses across the table. Malfoy glares at it. 

"Why me?" he asks wearily, as if Harry had asked him to submit to a random dark objects audit instead of a drink. But he still hooks a finger over the rim of the glass and drags it towards himself. 

"Do you see anyone more interesting in the room?" 

Malfoy accepts the oblique compliment with rigid suspicion and lifts the firewhisky to his lips. A frown runs over his brow as he seems to recognises its quality. He savours the taste of it, breathing out slowly through his mouth and nose as if he has some special skill in testing fine things, exposing their weaknesses and drawing out their virtues. 

Harry leans back in his chair, entrenching himself. "I'll stay as long as the drink lasts. Then you can send me on my way."

If Malfoy's last glance over the room is searching for a diversion, he finds none. 

"Please yourself," he shrugs and takes a longer, deeper sip.

*

The pressure of driving a conversation is strange. Harry has become too used to letting them wash over him, or simply avoiding them. Unlike almost everybody else Harry knows, Malfoy appears reluctant to talk about himself. He parries every question with a blunt "yes" or "no", occasionally putting a toe just over the borders of politeness. He exhibits no interest in Harry and gives nothing back.

Harry casts about for a topic of conversation that might draw Malfoy out of himself. Talking about school would give the impression - false, as it happens - that he hasn't moved on. But he's forgotten everything about Malfoy's life outside Hogwarts. He remembers the newspaper folded on the table between them.

"You speak Italian then?" he ventures. 

"Almost perfectly," Malfoy tells him and indicates a small leather-bound book at his elbow. Harry seizes it and reads the spine. It's a dictionary and, grateful for the distraction, he flips it open. On the inside front cover is an inscription in neat capital letters: "Don't forget. Ilya."

The obvious question is out of Harry's mouth unthinkingly. 

Malfoy smiles and takes a leisurely sip of his drink. "You'd like him," he says in a rare display of loquaciousness. 

"How do you know?" Harry asks, much less coolly than he meant to because the revelation that Ilya is not a girl's name leaves him torn between jealousy and a creeping sort of hope. For a while, he thinks that Malfoy will not deign to answer. 

"He plays weekend Quidditch like it's a mortal duel. There's barely a bone in his body any more that isn't held together by magic." Malfoy plucks the book from Harry's grasp. "I haven't seen many players put as much on the line as he does."

Harry's next question rises awkwardly as he looks for veiled meaning in that last comment. "Do you still play?"

Does he play? There's a certain balance in the way Malfoy holds himself that would fit with hours spent on the broom. His face, however, is too pale to reflect much time out in the Italian sun, and his fingers drumming very slightly on the tabletop bear no calluses. "Hardly at all," Malfoy tells him and then, though he looks as if it pains him, can't avoid the natural response. "You?"

"Sometimes." He wishes Ron were here to mention that Puddlemere have asked him to try out twice, and Ballycastle and the Falcons once each. Though he usually resents the quiet nagging from his friends with its implicit criticism of his current slight ambitions, for once in his life it would be useful. "Not so much. The occasional friendly match, you know. They had an old school tournament in summer. Four matches over four weekends."

Behind the boredom, Malfoy's voice takes on an ugly edge. "Oh, spare me the details. You caught the Snitch four times and added the cup to the heap in your trophy room. Very good, Potter. Aren't you still the little hero." 

Through the rose-coloured glasses of this comfortable evening, Harry had been remembering their history as competitive, nothing more. If there were moments where their rivalry spilled over into something darker, these were aberrations sprung from the weight of larger events. Watching Malfoy's fingers strain on his glass, for the first time he wonders how he looks through Malfoy's eyes. 

"I didn't get to touch the Snitch," he says, which is only a small lie. Since this information causes Malfoy to study him curiously, he basks in it and lets the silence draw out. "Charlie Weasley played Seeker. I was just a reserve. My only match was in the third round when Wood had to play in Japan."

Malfoy's lips tighten as if he is biting back a derisive remark. This new restraint frustrates Harry. It's as if Malfoy always considered himself too good to mix his words with Harry's, and now has mastered the self-control to put that theory into practice. His resistance only multiplies Harry's determination. 

"The Slytherin Seeker was a woman called Pugh. Played a bit for the Harpies in the eighties. She plays a solo game - ran circles of the pitch and kept clear of me. I was so bored by the second hour that the Snitch was almost in her hand before I saw it." He adds candidly: "I missed your sort of game."

Malfoy's mouth gives an almost imperceptible twitch. "The dirty sort?" he asks acidly and throws back the last of his drink. The gesture has enough world-weary ease in it to tie Harry's stomach in a knot. He pulls his gaze away from where it follows the movement of Malfoy's throat as he swallows. He must have seen Malfoy's throat every day for six years. It's never before made him want to hold his palm over it and feel the muscles flex. He turns quickly to signal the barman for another round, if only to distract himself from the disorientating spike of desire, which is a distinctly less innocent sensation than the one that brought him over here. 

* 

Malfoy's sense of humour is elusive and so dry that Harry can't be entirely sure it's there. It sits oddly on his last memories of Malfoy, desperate and cornered but still all too serious about all the wrong ideas, and he wonders how far back it goes. Malfoy's hard-won smile is a wholly private gesture, an exclusive high wall behind which he wordlessly derides the rest of the world. Even Crabbe and Goyle had laughed a little nervously around him, as if their permission to do so might be withdrawn at any moment. Harry wants to know what that same smile would look like turned to him, including him in the joke. If he could think of how to do it, he'd like to make Malfoy laugh. 

"These last two years have been good to you, you know," he says out of the blue.

That at least earns him a quizzical smile, and the way Malfoy turns his face slightly away from the torchlight is enough to let Harry believe he might be concealing the beginnings of a blush.

"Another then?" he offers brightly, leaping up from the table before Malfoy can consider turning him down. 

*

The wall behind the bar is lined with bottles - bright colours muted with dust, containers shaped like stars or moons or dragons' heads, several oozing smoke over their rims. It stumps him. Trying to predict Malfoy's tastes reminds him how little in the way of cold, hard facts he has won in the last hour. Malfoy works for a goblin co-operative tracking down rare magical artefacts, and his evasiveness on this question suggests that he never completed his final year of school. He lives mostly in Turin, where he appears to have no enduring friends, except perhaps for Ilya of the suggestive inscription, and from his terse deflection of discussion on the topic Harry deduces that his presence in England is not permanent. Harry orders a bitter ashphodel liqueur in a tall, thin shooter and, after hurried consultation with the barman, a round-bellied glass of Armagnac. 

He places both before Malfoy. 

"Take what you want," Harry tells him, much less smoothly than he'd rehearsed it. He has never learned how to flirt. It is a discipline which contradicts everything in his nature, with its subterfuge and adherence to invisible rules. His only experience has been watching other people attempt it as he tried awkwardly to escape their attentions. 

Malfoy gives him a long, hard look and then, smirking slightly, winds his fingers around the stem of the Armagnac glass. Another Muggle affectation. Harry wonders if everything Malfoy does tonight will strike him as exotic or mysterious.

After the first sip, Malfoy sets the glass down and clasps his hands on the table as if preparing himself to receive a criminal sentence. "Well then," he says. "I suppose you'd better tell me about yourself. Take it as read that I've heard the basic details of the demise of the Dark Lord and start from what happened afterwards."

He says this as if Harry's life unwound like a good story, packed with climaxes and noteworthy events, but Harry has fought a gruelling battle to break that pattern. For the first time, he has wrested a degree of control over his destiny. Contentment, however, is not something you can spin tales about. Malfoy will think his life too easy and unambitious. 

The asphodel liqueur makes his tongue curl when he takes in too much. He swallows a bigger mouthful straight down, pushes it away and stalls. "What do you want to know?"

Malfoy's disappointed sigh implies he's questioning his decision to ask anything at all. 

Harry forces down another mouthful and presses on: "After the ... after it was all over, I went to Cornwall for a week. When I got back everything had been sorted out. The rest is politics. They re-opened the Wizengamot -" 

If anything, Malfoy looks more disappointed. He says a little sneeringly, "I don't need a history lesson, Potter. I talk to people. I read the papers."

The way his little finger is tapping the tabletop, he might choose any moment to walk off. Harry scours his brain for some insider information he can offer, something beyond the official published version, something that might make an impression. Anything to keep Malfoy attached to that seat, an impossible arm's reach away.

"Shacklebolt wasn't the first choice for Minister, you know. They offered it to Arthur Weasley first, only he-"

"If you insist on avoiding the point," Malfoy interrupts him as he snatches Harry's hand and drags it to his side of the table. Harry blames liquor, absence from Quidditch and sheer improbability for catching him unprepared. Malfoy turns Harry's hand palm-up and presses his knuckles into the wood, spreading his fingers out. By the time that, just as suddenly, Malfoy withdraws his grip, Harry's arm is tingling right up to his neck. The pressure of Malfoy's gaze makes his palm itch, but it's no substitute for the surprising quick strength of his hands.

"Uneven lifeline. I see a lacklustre academic record and a longstanding inability to play by the rules." There is a definite sneer in the corner of his mouth as he reels off his diagnosis. "Your lifeline ends like a badly chewed quill. Thwarted love, is it? Thwarted love or stymied ambition. Possibly both." 

"Neither," Harry says firmly. "Not thwarted or ... just not."

"No, I'm definitely reading stymied ambition. What happened to your zeal for authority? Why aren't you an Auror?"

With his free hand, Harry reaches for his glass and abandons it. He has no intention of trying to sum up the complexity of that decision. Whatever it is he wants from Malfoy, unburdening his soul is unlikely to advance him towards getting it. He says, "I never wanted to be one. Not really."

"You? You who formed your own private militia while you were still at school - _you_ didn't want to be an Auror? What was it really? Did you fail a few subjects after all?"

"I had the marks, Malfoy." This reminds Harry heavily of the days when he was cutting himself free of it all - free of the Aurors, of everything else that smacked of history or authority, and of anyone that tied him to the person he had been.

"So, not the marks. What was it then?" There is something off about the tone of his inquiry, something too light, too warm. But Harry leaves his hand lying palm-up, in case Malfoy might want to touch it again. "You're sure you didn't muddy your record by torturing a man to death?"

Harry is opening his mouth to laugh when he is sobered by the recollection of some of the rumours that have filtered back to him. "Is someone saying I did?"

"Not just one person."

His practice at shrugging off slanderous gossip suddenly deserts him. Since he can't even guess which incident might have been twisted out of all recognition to ignite this story, he has no defence. Impotence makes him spit out: "Do you think I did?"

"I'm waiting for you to tell me."

Something in the quiet way Malfoy says this suggests that the wait has lasted more than just these last few moments. He looks up from Harry's palm and holds his eye. It unsettles Harry's powers of thought intensely. The more Malfoy looks at him, the more it isn't enough. 

"I've never killed anyone. Not even Voldemort. Pettigrew cast the curse that finished him." Malfoy's slight catch of breath betrays the fact that he hadn't heard that bit before. Not many people have: he'd rather allow the world its misconceptions than discuss that night at all. Then, because he can't stand the cowardice of sanitising it, Harry adds: "Not that I wouldn't have done it. Only I never had to."

"Naturally. And the torture?"

The question, so casually asked, is infuriating. "What about it, Malfoy? This isn't a fucking chess game we were playing. They were out to kill us. They _did_ kill some of us - and did worse whenever they had half a chance. You would have done the same. If you didn't, you'd be dead." 

Malfoy only continues to watch him and wait. It occurs to Harry that uncomfortable questions come easier from the mouths of men in glasses. The lenses shelter Malfoy's eyes, taking the hardness out of them, and the fine silver frames with stands of white hair brushing over them by his temples put a scholarly cast on his face. With his stillness and the visual harmony of his white skin and simple black robes, Malfoy has put himself out of reach of Harry's anger. He wonders if Malfoy himself understands how effective a shield it is. 

"What do you think?" Harry sighs. "When I was defending myself, I'd use any curse I could think of, I didn't care what it would do. But I've never attacked someone who didn't have their wand drawn on me first." He doesn't miss the very subtle tilting of Malfoy's head at that. "Never."

There are no further questions. When he returns to Harry's palm, Malfoy splays it with the pads of his fingers spread gently over Harry's. Judging by the softness of them, he hasn't held anything rougher than a polished length of rowan wood for the last two years. 

Belatedly, Harry tries to turn the inquisition around. "Since when do you believe in the power of palmistry?" 

Malfoy runs his thumb over the crease at the base of Harry's fingers, very slowly.

"They say a real Diviner knows the answer before he walks into the room." Bent slightly over his study, he looks up over the top of his glasses, eyes alight. "All the manhandling is just to make sure the customer knows he got what he paid for." With a flash of smile that hits right between Harry's ribs, he goes back to his analysis. 

*

There are other moments like this, as the conversation progresses incrementally under Harry's determined guidance. Moments in which curiosity becomes fascination, and fascination becomes something more. Like when, explaining the hallmarks of the pre-Enlightenment cauldron, Malfoy sketches the shape of it on the tabletop with his clean, nimble fingertips, his middle finger bare where his father used to wear the enormous family seal. Like when Harry mentions Snape out of the blue, and Malfoy looks, for an instant, as if the whole floor had lurched underneath him. 

After that, Harry tries harder to avoid all mention of politics, of the war. Apart from Zabini, whose mother sent him to relatives in Alexandria at the end of sixth year, few of Malfoy's classmates would have survived the Death Eaters' strategy of throwing their youngest and greenest recruits into the frontline of confrontations. He tries to lift the conversation out of the sombre stiffness that overtakes it as this omission draws attention to itself.

"Hogwarts hasn't changed," Harry tries, imagining that his last visit, over a month ago, will provide a neutral topic. "They tried to start a football team, to give them a taste of Muggle life. It closed down within a month, and a good thing too." He notes Malfoy's expression. "Football is a Muggle-"

"Yes, I'm familiar with the concept," Malfoy drawls. "What puzzles me is why you weren't in the vanguard of the Muggle offensive."

Harry shrugs. He can't explain why his political beliefs have got so complex and convoluted that he hardly thinks of them as beliefs anymore. "It's ... They don't ... Muggle kids grow up fast, Malfoy. When a kid from a Muggle family gets their Hogwarts letter, even at eleven or twelve they've started to turn into adults already. Maybe they smoke. They might've tried harder stuff. Hell, they could almost have a kid of their own. If you're going to make them start all over and learn to be wizards, then they have to make a clean break. Everything at Hogwarts has to be new. The pumpkin juice, the pictures, the furniture, the sport."

"Is that what Hogwarts is to you? A eccentric menu and a few contrary staircases?"

"No! Of course not." The alcohol is making his face warm, and what he is trying to articulate is a deeply felt childhood affection, for the first place he had every really been happy. "These little changes are important. Everything has to be new and exciting. If you let them hold on to their Muggle games, it will be Hogwarts that changes, not them."

Malfoy's face darkens. "It will always be Hogwarts that changes. How could it be any other way, you bloody simpleton! There are sixty million of _them_ and barely ten thousand of us - and that's even if you include all the tainted bloodlines. If you let them into our world _at all_ , you can't expect to hold onto it. It isn't just the recreational activities at Hogwarts. You'll see, Potter. In the end, when it's all too late."

Very deliberately, Harry picks a few traces of paint from the skin over his knuckles and bites back all the true but pointless slogans he wants to spit in retort. And funnily, the longer the silence goes on, the better he feels about it. Contrary to his old instinct, he doesn't have to answer Malfoy's provocations. Letting them pass doesn't make them more true. In fact, remaining unchallenged only allows the hyperbole in them to stand out. 

Whether or not he hears the silence in the same way, Malfoy watches Harry's fidgeting with his scowl receding. Eventually he pushes his glass across the table. "The Armagnac was good," he says, that slender strain of amusement returning. "If you're still buying." 

*

The lull as he waits for the next round to be poured is a blessed relief. Leaning on the bartop, Harry has a clear view of the street outside, full of people walking past, completely oblivious to Draco Malfoy's existence and certainly not turning themselves inside-out over the faint possibility that Malfoy's lightning-quick flashes of encouragement might reflect his intentions better than the derision with which he coats every sentence. 

One foot in front of the other is all it would take to put Malfoy behind him and postpone all the difficult questions. What does he want? Watching the barman pour the Armagnac with slow reverence, he knows he wants Malfoy to want him. But it's a much larger step to take his carefully guarded homoerotic fantasies and put them in the most treacherous pair of hands he can think of. Malfoy has no mercy and no sense of fair play. The flutter that thought sets off in his stomach could equally be foreboding or excitement.

"Did you mistake me for the patient type?" says Malfoy's voice just behind him, a burst of warm breath running over his neck. He reaches past Harry to pick up his drink, leaning in so close that their jaws would brush if Harry turned. 

Harry has to grip his own glass hard to steady his hand. What he wants is beyond doubt. The only real question is whether he can have it. 

*

By the time they are another two drinks on, it has reached the hour where the few remaining patrons are winding up their evening, or in the case of the group by the door, stepping up their pace as the clock behind the bar twitches toward closing time. 

"There's not much to get nostalgic about," Malfoy says out of nowhere. 

Harry, to whom this unpretentious little pub has come to mean a lot over the last four years, replies: "Depends, doesn't it."

"Same customers, week in week out." Malfoy gestures with his gillywater. "All the same people at all the same pubs. Fortescue's even has the same seven flavours. Nothing changes. When they stumble out of here, they'll make straight for one of the all-night dens in Knockturn, just like they did last week, and they'll probably stop to piss on exactly the same flagstones on the way."

This doesn't sound to Harry like the perspective of someone who means to stay in London any longer than his undisclosed errand requires. 

"It's not so bad. There's more going on that you think, if you can be bothered looking. That American bloke with the all-magical swing band is at the Alchemist's Arms tonight. Or there's the dinner at the Ministry Dining Rooms - all sorts of guests. I was going to drop in later."

"The Bones Foundation? You won't get tickets now, not even you. They sold out in the first day, the secretary told-"

Written across Harry's face must be the memory of the swatch of tickets Percy parcelled out to family members just last week, and after it, the reluctant conclusion he draws. Malfoy's expression changes. 

"Ah," he says quietly. "The more things stay the same, then. The war's over and the dead are buried, but a reformed Death Eater's money never loses the smell of blood, I suppose."

He grimaces, perhaps at the lie or perhaps at himself for having missed it. Behind the glasses, it's a vulnerable gesture, the sort that has always triggered a reflexive response in Harry. "Have my ticket," he hears himself say, in the same moment he realises he only has one ticket and contemplates with dismay the prospect of losing Malfoy to a drab formal dinner. 

Malfoy glares at him. "I'm not dressed," he says very pointedly.

Harry suspects there's a degree of pride at work there. He holds back from noting that, judging by everything he's been able to observe in moments where Malfoy's attention lay elsewhere, Malfoy wears his robes the way Harry has never been able to: simple enough to be equally appropriate in the company of Friday night drinkers or visiting royalty. 

"Why do you want to go? You know the guests of honour are Muggles, don't you?"

Malfoy takes a sudden interest in the shelves behind the bar. "You've never understood my principles. I'm not afraid of your Muggles. I don't even hate them. They have their place - in their world, not ours."

There's nothing to be gained, Harry concludes, in challenging the bald-faced lies in that statement. Malfoy continues.

"I'm quite comfortable with them, you know. I go to their auction houses all the time. Half-blood wizards can be utterly inept when it comes to their legacies. It's a disgrace how often I find valuable magical artefacts tangled up in the estates of Muggle relatives who haven't got the slightest idea how important they are." 

"Is that why you wanted to go tonight? Establish your Muggle-friendly credentials?" 

"Hardly." Malfoy frowns for a moment. "There's someone there I wanted to meet."

The intimately cryptic way he puts it makes a cold fist around Harry's heart. A small part of him is glad, because the evening is lengthening and they're fast approaching the point where Harry will have to do more than just buy drinks if he wants to keep Malfoy's attention. But there's a deeper, stronger instinct that wants him to put himself on the line - make an open pass at Malfoy and risk a rejection that's as cruel as Malfoy cares to make it. The flex of his toes inside his boots is familiar: it's the adrenalin of fighting against the odds. 

"Who?" he asks with perfect steadiness. 

Malfoy says crossly: "He should have stopped in for a drink before the dinner. He's supposed to be a connoisseur of the Dragonsbreath they brew here."

The table Malfoy had chosen has a clear view of the doorway, and this torchlit corner would naturally draw the eye of anyone entering the room. As it drew Harry's. He remembers how Malfoy looked when he first saw him: clean and gently lit, posed studiously over his foreign language newspaper. The fist around his heart tightens. 

"Who?" Harry repeats. 

"Henrik Maier," Malfoy says absent-mindedly.

Harry has to think for a moment: the outgoing head of the International Wizarding Federation, a man well into his sixties. He can't stop the smile that takes over his face.

"What?" Malfoy snaps, then seems to turn his mind back to Harry. "Why aren't you there? If you've got a ticket, why aren't you at the dinner?"

"I can't be in two places at once," Harry says simply.

This does not seem to please Malfoy entirely. "Why Maier?" Harry asks, to head off that line of questioning.

"Why Maier? Oh, only because he has the leading collection of antique wands in Europe." Malfoy's not as aloof as he likes to think. When he finds something worth a bit of passion, it shows in the brightness of his eyes and the way his hands start to map out concepts unconsciously on the tabletop, a habit Harry has started to get fond of. "The first maplewood wand imported from New Amsterdam? He has it. His collection of Pacific Rim wands is legendary: banya and kauri pine with Antipodean Opal-eye. And that's not even starting on the experimental models he's acquired - new cores, new alignments. There was a Swedish group trying Muggle-made fibres as the base - a complete disaster, of course; only living materials have the flexibility to bear intense magical energy -"

Malfoy breaks off suddenly. His hands retreat to his lap. His voice flattens: "I don't suppose you know where he's staying, do you? He's got to have breakfast somewhere. I've got the whole morning to bump into him before I go."

The tightening behind Harry's navel confirms that some part of him had held out hope that Malfoy meant to stay in London, had pictured walking in off the street on other evenings, not knowing for sure whether he'd see a blond head bent over a newspaper at the corner table. He glances over the empty tables and the last four drinkers lingering in the doorway; the last of the glasses towelling themselves dry behind the counter. It's a sly kind of magic the way Malfoy has changed this place. Next time Harry walks in, it won't be the same easy haven. 

Malfoy folds his newspaper around the little dictionary and slides his chair back with a painful grating. When he stands, the torchlight, which has been gently favouring the left side of his face, falls differently down the front of him. The embroidery around the cuffs and borders of his robe reveals itself as a faded grey, the sheen of silver long gone, and there's a patch over his right elbow where the light mists oddly as if catching in a glamour charm. Harry remembers what Molly Weasley said once, blushing on her son's behalf, about the sort of salaries goblins were notorious for paying. As Malfoy bends to collect the satchel resting against the table leg, his face turns side-on, revealing for an instant his naked eye with the tiny, weary lines around it. Glass has a tendency to distort appearances, after all.

"So you think Maier might sell you some of his wands?"

"Of course not," Malfoy answers impatiently and rests his satchel back on the chair: Harry congratulates himself on having picked the right question. "He's not in it for the money. This is his - well, his hobby. I've got a contact with a few pieces from the Caucasus - eighteen hundred years old and undamaged, which is almost unheard of in that region. I've been saving this one for Maier. He's a useful man to have on your side."

"Is he?" Harry wonders what Malfoy could need badly enough to make this depth of strategy worthwhile. 

" _Is_ he, Potter? He owns four newspapers and a stable of Quidditch teams. He's on first-name terms with every significant head-of-state in Europe, and most of the Muggle ones as well. Don't tell me England's so cut off from the rest of the world that this is news to you."

Harry shrugs. "I only met him twice."

There is a very long silence. 

"Oh?" Malfoy asks, not especially nicely, and sits back down. 

"He cut the ribbon at the opening of the new Ministry buildings last year. I was kind of obliged to be there."

"That's once. And?"

"And I fixed his trunk at the conference afterwards." Harry settles in to the story. "I was having a drink in Percy's room - you wouldn't remember Percy - Head Boy in third year, tight as they come-"

"I remember but I don't care. The trunk?" The detached, slightly sneering demeanour Malfoy wore at the start of the evening has vanished. He sits straight in his seat, leaning forward with his robes and his lips a little loosened by alcohol, and his eyes nowhere but on Harry. 

Harry finds himself unable to muster the concentration for complex sentences. "Maier's room was a few doors down. We could hear him kicking something. Making threats. I went to have a look."

"You would, of course."

"It was a bad-tempered old bastard, the trunk. There was a gargoyle on the handle, some sort of magical guardian, but it must have been five hundred years old and getting doddery. Every time Maier tried to open it, it just wheezed and said the password had changed. All his conference papers were in there, too. He was about to use exploding charms when I asked if I could have a try." 

Malfoy's voice drops. "There's only a handful of spells that would force a guardian to open. You shouldn't know any of them."

Harry hopes that Malfoy never finds a cause to look at him with genuine adoration. Right now, under the wary sort of respect in his eyes, Harry's heart forgets itself and gives a few sluggish twists before it musters the will to beat again. Mouth dry, he turns around to signal another drink for himself. 

Then he can't put off the moment where he has to admit it. "I don't know any of those spells. I just coaxed a bit. Flattered it. Showed it what a chisel looks like. People underestimate how smart gargoyles are, you know. Maier thought it was pretty funny. He said I should visit him in Utrecht and see what I could do with his jammed cellar door." 

"And admire his wand collection." 

"He didn't mention that. You should ask him about it yourself."

"What do you mean?" He frowns as Harry's drink settles on the table. "Armagnac, thank you," he calls reproachfully across the room. Harry takes a hard gulp of his firewhisky. Malfoy, apparently, is not leaving just yet.

"On Mr Potter's tab, then?" asks the barman.

"Yes," Harry says at the same time Malfoy snaps "No."

From somewhere in the depths of his satchel, Malfoy manages to find a few Sickles. He reaches for his pocket, then checks himself and instead walks his payment over to the bar. 

"Is that enough?"

"A bit over." 

"Well, I suppose you should keep the change then," Malfoy says, and only then lets go of the coins. 

While Malfoy is waiting for his drink, Harry turns the newspaper around. Apart from the few words of French they scarcely bothered to teach him at school, he doesn't speak any foreign languages. So far, everyone has been able to meet him in English. He imagines stepping out from the Floo into an alien world, where the street signs are incomprehensible and the speech around him is so strange he might as well be deaf and dumb. In place of apprehension, what he feels a deep and painful longing.

*

Some time later, Malfoy settles back into his chair, looking for all the world as if he meant to stay. He watches Harry over the top of his Armagnac. Behind all that glass, with the torchlight and the warm gold of the drink shooting up into it, Malfoy's intentions are obscure. 

"What's it going to be, Potter?"

It's clear that Malfoy is turning the topic onto something else entirely, but Harry can't find the subtlety of language to give an appropriately playful response. He throws back the second half of his drink instead. 

"Well, Maier did invite me to Utrecht. I'll write you a letter of introduction. Go and visit him." If he had a decent sense of strategy, Harry thinks, he would have suggested they both go together. He fumbles for paper, but Malfoy takes one look at his weatherbeaten rucksack and from his own satchel draws out a leather wallet stocked with crisp parchment. Harry adds, "You write it. You know what you want from him."

Malfoy eyes him distrustfully. Now that he spends most of his life doing favours of a sort, Harry has learned to offer his gifts in a gruff and understated way to ease the embarrassment of acceptance. "If this wand's as good as you say it is, you get your deal, Maier's happy, and I get a little bit of the credit." Malfoy's quill turns non-committally between two fingers. "It's just a letter." 

Finally, Malfoy bends over the table and writes. 

"Don't put 'colleague'," Harry says, his heart beating oddly fast. "It's sounds false. Put 'friend'. Unless you're planning to cheat him - if you are, then put 'acquaintance from Hogwarts'."

Malfoy seems to find that amusing. He adds another few lines and hands it over. He has, after all, written 'colleague'. Harry adds a few more words and taps it with his wand to rearrange it in the shape of his own handwriting. Signed, he pushes it back across the table. 

Malfoy leaves it lying there, its edges curling up perilously close to a small puddle of condensation from a previous glass. 

"That's all right, what I said about the cellar door, isn't it?" Harry asks. "You'll be able to fix it. You'll have your wand back in Turin, right?"

With a flourish of hand deft enough to make Harry wonder whether they really have matched each other drink for drink, Malfoy rolls the letter up and sweeps it to the edge of the table. 

"Oh, I have my wand here in my fatherland," Malfoy tells him in a terribly pleasant voice. "Safely locked away in the Ministry's most secure repository, from which I am graciously permitted to retrieve it the instant before I and my notorious treasonable tendencies retreat across the Channel and become someone else's problem once again." 

"Oh," is all Harry can think of to say. "But you were released without trial. That's not fair."

"No, Potter. It isn't. Well done."

Harry struggles to remember more about the Ministry's decrees on former Death Eaters but, having deliberately avoided all the trials except Bellatrix Lestrange's, he is absolutely ignorant. 

"Is that all you've got to say?" Malfoy goes on with faint malice. "It's unfair, gentlemen. Unfair! Where's the sense of righteousness you're famous for? It's no surprise that our fate isn't enough to excite you. Your causes were always so predictable. You like them weak, don't you? Muggles and Mudbloods and house-elves - helpless sycophants who've got nothing better to do than shower you in admiration."

That last glass is hitting Harry hard now. "What do you want, Malfoy?" He tries to think through the haze. "You want me to fix this for you? You want me to be some sort of champion for the oppressed former Death Eaters, do you? Would that be all of them? Or just the ones who were released? Or just you?"

Malfoy gives him a slow, glinting smile across the top of his glass. His wet lips catch the light. 

"All I want is my wand."

Harry has to shift his foot against the side of his rucksack, to touch the pocket where he keeps his own wand, remembering the feeling of having it out of reach. He says sullenly, "I suppose you know the Ministry building will be well and truly closed by now."

Malfoy tips his glass back and exposes the stretch of throat that Harry knows will make regular appearances in his fantasies from now on. "I've heard," he says, turning playful, and sucks the liqueur from his lower lip, "that you've a knack for getting into this sort of facility after hours. Care to do it tonight?"

Harry knows he's a little drunk, and he knows he's still prone to going overboard on issues that whip up his moral indignation, and above all he knows he's losing his sense of proportion on everything concerning Malfoy, but nonetheless the idea of slipping off with Malfoy on an illegal nocturnal escapade is too enticing to refuse. 

"If you like. You'll be coming with me, though. I hope your shoes don't squeak."

Malfoy leans back quickly, throwing the shadow like a veil over his forehead. His mouth makes an indecisive open shape, ready to spit out the retort that doesn't seem to land. "Thank you, Potter," he says eventually, brittle and just a little bit breathy. "We can fight our own battles. I won't be calling on your criminal aptitudes tonight." And he stands up. It works exactly a set of scales. As Malfoy rises, Harry's heart plummets into his shoes. 

Harry leaps up beside him, but the change in altitude is too sudden. White spots dance in front of his eyes and he reaches out for the nearest solid thing: Malfoy.

"Not here," Malfoy hisses, startled, and draws away. 

Not here. Harry swaggers against the tabletop, his knees turning treacherous beneath him. The limited refusal contains a whole world of implicit acquiescence. Malfoy is not, after all, turning him down. The liquor in his belly burns, and he realises with a start that though he is quite a bit drunk, he is not nearly drunk enough to explain away the recklessness of what he imagines doing with Malfoy the moment he can get them somewhere private. There is a pleasant edge of fear to his anticipation, too. He will be flying blind, whatever he does from here on in, and he has no idea how much patience he can expect from Malfoy. 

"Okay. Fine," he says quickly, with a smile he doesn't try to suppress. He holds onto the back of his chair to steady himself, then makes it to the bar, which he grips just as tightly. The barman is wearing his blankest face, schooling himself to look oblivious as Harry negotiates to take a room. He normally enjoys the meandering walk through the park from the Floo to his front door - and he especially fancies the idea of making the long, quiet journey with Malfoy - but he can't take the risk that either the distance or the presence of his flatmate might change Malfoy's mind. It's a busy night, because of the dinner, and it takes some flicking through the stained booking register to find something free: the tiny attic with the steep sloping roof. Harry takes it without hesitation.

Only when he turns back, Malfoy has disappeared. His newspaper is gone, along with every trace of him except the empty Armagnac glass and Harry's letter. The blood drains from Harry's face. For a long time, he watches the corridor that leads to the bathroom, certain that he can't have read Malfoy so very wrong, waiting for the moment he will saunter back into the room and make his lack of faith seem stupid. Two minutes he waits, three, and with every passing second his chest grows tighter. After five minutes, he is slumped over the bar, the anaesthesia of drunkenness quickly wearing off and leaving him feeling his bruises. After six minutes, he is planning to try all the nearby lodgings with some urgent message until he finds the place Malfoy is staying at. He thinks he'll try The Enchantress first-

"Thought I'd find you here." 

Ron's wry voice at his elbow has never been less welcome. His loosened cravat reminds Harry that the charity dinner will have finished by now without him.

"They've closed up around you," Ron grins, and it's true. The barman is cleaning up the last table in the corner. The Armagnac glass dangling between his thick fingers looks as fragile as a violet stalk. "Coming along then?" 

Ron's presence is grounding. Some things are impossible and shouldn't be dreamt of. Tomorrow he'll be six storeys up, helping fix the gutters at St Mungo's, and he won't even have time to think about Malfoy. When he stands, Ron grabs his arm to steady him. The barman's sweeping charm has sent the day's debris skittering towards the corner of the room, and the floor looks like it's running away from him.

"I'm not drunk."

"You'll sober up quick enough in the cold outside."

As they cross the threshold, the last of the torches fizzes out. Ron shoves his hands in his pockets and leans forward into the wind. 

"Dean will be there," he hurls over his shoulder without preamble. "He just got back yesterday. He caught up with Ginny in Vancouver, said she was doing pretty well. She's still mad that you were too busy to have a drink with her in January."

"Is she?" Harry answers mechanically. When did Malfoy get cold feet? Though Malfoy certainly had a measure of cowardice as a child, Harry remembers him as a risk-taker, and he doesn't want to believe that the last two years have knocked that out of him. On the other hand, if the evening's conversation has been some sort of joke at Harry's expense, then Malfoy seems to have departed before the punchline. 

"The speeches weren't too bad then?" Harry asks, to stop himself wondering what Malfoy might be doing right now. He misses the answer because he's too busy noticing how the sting of thinking about Malfoy is still better than not thinking about him at all.

They approach the left hand turn to cut through Knockturn. Harry should know better than to hope. He ventures one reckless glance back. 

And there's a light on at the top of the Leaky. In the attic room. 

"I'm not coming." Harry grabs the brickwork on the corner and catches himself.

Ron, who can't see his grin, just scoffs, "Got a better offer, have you?"

"Yeah. Make an excuse for me. Tell them when you found me I was too pissed to come out. Tell them you couldn't find me at all."

"What?" says Ron, finally catching on. "Harry!"

"Night, Ron."

Jogging back along the street, he doesn't take his eyes off the four illuminated rectangles of glass far above, until he hits the doorway and they disappear. 

**

The stairs take forever to climb. He stops at the last steep flight beneath the hatch that leads up to the attic room. Last chance to back out. Last chance to wake up tomorrow morning the same Harry Potter and slip back into the same life. 

As he lays his foot on the first stair, he has that feeling again, of the road unwinding beneath his feet and leading him upward. It's as if he's climbed these stairs before, as if he knows what happens when he reaches the top.

Harry pushes up the trapdoor and faint light comes tumbling down. Above him, Malfoy is lying face-down on the bed, still fully dressed, with a page from his newspaper folded over on the pillow in front of him. It looks like a crossword - the kind that snarls or spits flames at incorrect answers. Malfoy confidently fills in a couple of squares. 

"I thought it was safe to presume that a building of this size could hardly have more than one attic," Malfoy says mildly. 

Whatever his reasons for going ahead, Harry is far too relieved to reproach him. When he drops the trapdoor, it seals him alone with Malfoy into this tiny space, triangular with only a thin strip beneath the roof's apex for a man to stand upright. Apart from the low chest under the window, the stool at the end of the bed, and a washbasin on a pedestal, the room holds no distraction and no diversion apart from each other. 

"You could do something about the cold for a start," Malfoy tells him.

Harry, still warm from climbing the stairs, hears an edge of impotent frustration in that. A little fire flickers into action in the grate, fuelled nicely by Harry's dislike of being commanded. 

"Is that better?" he asks, but Malfoy makes no answer and continues to give no acknowledgement to the reason that has brought them here. It seemed simple enough in the alcohol-loosened intimacy of the bar. Now, with his hair clipped neatly over the nape of his neck and the longer strands falling over his cheeks, Malfoy seems a complete stranger again, though perhaps it is only that Harry has never seen him from such a defenceless angle before. Harry could reach out and grasp Malfoy's ankle, and yet he suspects that the most awkward territory between them still remains to be crossed.

Finally, Malfoy sets aside his crossword and draws himself up into a sitting position, one hand draped over the carved oak pillar of the bedhead as if to emphasise how completely casually he takes all this. 

"You took your time coming up here," he notes with an edge of offence. "Should I expect the same lack of punctuality in everything you do?"

Harry blushes, hearing the broad innuendo in that. "You shouldn't expect anything," he mutters, and that puts an odd light in Malfoy's eyes. 

When he sits down on the edge of the bed, Malfoy slides his hand up Harry's thigh. Apparently it's that easy. There's no explanation or negotiation, no attempt to articulate half-submerged, murky sentiments. There is only Malfoy's long fingers squeezing above his knee and slipping higher. Yet it's too hasty for Harry. It seems cowardly rather than bold to pretend this is no more than a matter between hand and thigh. Harry doesn't find his emotions and his various body parts quite so easy to uncouple. 

He leans in and kisses Malfoy's lips, only once and gingerly at that, with their two sets of spectacles keeping them apart. 

Malfoy blinks quickly. "Ah," he says, as if Harry had told him something revealing but not especially surprising. His hand pauses then squeezes firmly, resuming its slow upward journey. 

To distract himself from last-minute doubts, Harry reaches out and runs his fingers through Malfoy's hair until they snag on the arm of his glasses. As he imagined, the metal is fine and warm. He slides them off and places them on the bedside table. 

It's as Harry feared. Without the glasses, Malfoy's eyes look smaller and colder, and the sneering, overcompensating thirteen-year-old of Harry's memory seems to peer out through them. Malfoy ducks his head, evading Harry's examination. As though he knew how effectively the silver frames obscured the person he used to be.

"When you're ready," Malfoy snaps, his shoulders rigid as if fighting a compulsion to cringe. For the first time all evening, he looks as if his control is slipping. 

It occurs to Harry that on their first day at Hogwarts, when the tone for their relationship was set, he had nothing to lose, nothing but a little instinctive pride and the meagre contents of his trunk. Malfoy, on the other hand, had everything to lose, and lost it. 

Harry tugs off his own glasses and sets them on the bedside table. The detail of Malfoy disappears, but it makes him more vivid, not less. He is torchlight glinting off white hair and the lingering smell of Armagnac on warm, parted lips. When Harry reaches out, his compromised vision heightens his other senses so he hears Malfoy's nervous indrawn breath with perfect precision. Under Harry's hand on his chest, Malfoy's pulse beats very fast. 

"All right then," Harry says. "I'm ready."

Their mouths meet half-way. It's a kiss without hesitation: lips mashing together and tongues sliding over each other. Malfoy's jaw is fine bone uncushioned by surplus flesh, but that only makes it all the more astonishing that the inside of his mouth is yielding and soft. Harry can't get enough of it. He presses his tongue into the sweet aftertaste of liqueur, as deep as he can manage, and Malfoy encourages him with the tilt of his head and his fingers digging into Harry's thigh.

It feels bare to kiss like this, only their mouths engaging without the tangle of embracing arms that Harry is used to. Bare but brilliant. At the back of his mind, Harry's uncensored inner voice babbles _I'm doing it. I'm kissing him. I'm really doing it._

After the night's slow suspense, he wants more, and he shifts forward to wrap his arms around Malfoy's back and press their bodies closer together. Malfoy doesn't exactly resist, but the long fingers of one hand slide around Harry's neck and, with his thumb over Harry's windpipe, Malfoy wordlessly resumes control. He leans sideways onto the bed until they are draped across it.

That and the demanding heat of Malfoy's mouth moving on his neck usher out the last of Harry's restraint. It's true that what's brought him this far is the intriguing complexity Malfoy has developed in his exile years, but right now the energy between them is simple: Malfoy is fit and eager and - oh god! - hard already, and Harry has dreamed of something like this for far too long to take it slowly.

Malfoy pulls back, watching him cautiously from under lowered lids and Harry has the impression he's waiting to let Harry drive this forward, to be the first to make an unequivocal demonstration of his desire. Harry has never been afraid to plunge in first. He rolls on top of Malfoy and grinds their hips together, and the laughter that was forming on Malfoy's lips vanishes.

All night he's been taunted by the different parts of Malfoy's body - his hands, his mouth, his neck, his shoulders - as he craved the liberty of touching them. Now that the unexpected privilege has been granted, his two hands are not enough to reach every stretch of flesh he has wished for. He scrabbles from thigh to hip to shoulder, frustrated by the amount of Malfoy that is shielded from his touch. He clutches at Malfoy's hips and tries to work his hand under their rolling bodies to feel the flex of his arse - and if his mouth weren't full of Malfoy's tongue he might be saying things he'd regret in the cold light of day.

Finally he manages to wedge his knee between Malfoy's legs and find an angle that crushes the bulge in Malfoy's trousers into the top of his thigh. Malfoy's hands in his hair tell him how good that is: he bucks up in short, wild thrusts. Harry bears down to give him as much traction as he can. Malfoy's cock is so hard he can feel the exact shape of it jabbing into his thigh. This is what he's wanted. He puts his own pleasure aside and seeks out Malfoy's throat, the tender skin below the stubble, and sucks hard as he shifts his knee up and feels the pulse of Malfoy's orgasm against his thigh. Malfoy seems to come forever, with his face turned away and his hips still bucking furiously. 

The thought of it, of Malfoy's clothes wet with come, of his carefully cut trousers dampening, and all that wet cloth grinding against Malfoy's softening cock, makes Harry hot with lust. He rubs himself against Malfoy's too-sharp hip, impatient now. Despite the uncomfortable angle, he's a few seconds away from coming and thrusting violently.

"Potter!" Malfoy hisses with the sort of frustration that suggests several prior attempts. He says it again. Harry breaks off his assault on Malfoy's neck.

"What?" he replies and sucks in a horribly dry gulp of air. To Harry's deep disappointment, Malfoy pushes Harry's hips up to make some space between their bodies. When Harry has supported himself on hands and knees, Malfoy's hand starts at his chin and makes a meandering journey over his chest, brushing both nipples through the sweat-damp cotton of his shirt, then his navel then, just an instant before Harry's control breaks down completely, onto the buttons of his jeans. The suspense as Malfoy slowly unfastens the buttons ties all the muscles in Harry's stomach into knots. Then finally he draws them open and slides the pads of his fingers over the soaking wet patch at the front of Harry's pants. His lips quirk approvingly as he cups Harry's cock in his hand and squeezes with infuriating gentleness. 

When Malfoy finally tires of fondling and winds his fingers in a firm, authoritative grip around Harry's naked shaft, Harry's groan comes from deep in his belly. Malfoy knows how to stroke him just perfectly: rough enough to be exciting; slow enough to leave him wanting more each time. This is the man's touch he has dreamed of, unapologetic. On the brink of desperation after the night's slow build-up, he rides Malfoy's hand blindly. Much later, he'll find himself unable to recall details: whether the bed squeaked or rocked, whether Malfoy had anything to say. The only sensation he will recall is Malfoy's fingers, secure and coaxing and constant, drawing him into an orgasm that leaves him dizzy and drained. He collapses face-first onto the bed and lies there with the vibrations of pleasure still running through him. 

A long while later comes Malfoy's distant voice, just a trace of sneer in it. "Been a while then, has it?" 

It's been almost a year since the utterly forgettable night he spent with Romilda Vane's friend, and over two years since Ginny. "A while," he mumbles. 

Malfoy flicks open the top two buttons on his own shirt then, frowning, does them up again. 

"You'll have things to do, I suppose. Some sort of drinks and cigars after the dinner. There's always some special event for the elite."

Contentment courses through Harry's veins. He opens his heavy eyes just enough to see the side of Malfoy's face and clumsily kisses his ear. 

"The room's booked till midday. I'm staying here. Only we missed dinner. The house-elves are really good. They'll do sandwiches or soup or something. If you're hungry."

Malfoy's cheek is salty with sweat and he licks it. 

"Is that on your account too, Potter?"

"What? Dinner? Yes. If you want it. Whatever you like. The ... the rest I hoped would be free."

Only faintly aware that he's still wearing his paint-spattered old shirt with his jeans loose around his thighs, he draws a deep breath, stretches and lets it out. He works his hand around to the soft skin on the inside of Malfoy's elbow. 

"Later," he murmurs, sleepiness and satisfaction slurring his words. "Chicken sandwiches. Stay."

With Harry's grip on his arm and Harry's forehead pressed into the dip at the end of his collarbone, Malfoy will find it difficult to do anything else. 

When he comes out of his doze, Malfoy has indeed slipped from his grasp, but only to move to the end of the bed, where he is undressing. Harry's body stirs instantly. He reaches around for his glasses and puts them back on again, just in time to see Malfoy notice this and blush beautifully down his neck and shoulders as he slides his trousers over his calves and steps out of them. 

Without the distraction of clothes, his white body is impossibly long. Harry is content just to watch him shedding his shirt and the silver pendant he wears beneath it and laying both on the stool. Malfoy's height is mostly in his torso, which is long-waisted and slender. His legs, after all, aren't as long as his effortless stride makes them look. If it weren't for all the angles at his elbows and knees, he'd be snake-thin and he moves in a fluid sort of slither, easing himself back onto the bed and crawling up it towards Harry.

When Malfoy rests his hands on either side of Harry's hips and slowly lowers himself, Harry finally realises what he's going to do. It's unthinkably hot. Every muscle from Harry's toes to his scalp strings tight, and he's rapidly hardening before Malfoy's mouth even touches him. 

Romilda Vane's friend had gone down on him, but with the sort of expression usually found in artworks depicting early church martyrs as the first sparks went up from the tinder around their feet. It had made him clumsy as he tried desperately to finish quickly and put her out of her discomfort, then panicked and wondered whether he was supposed to come at all. His weak orgasm left both of them disappointed. Malfoy's expression, on the other hand, looks much less like a martyr and much more like the leader of the torch-wielding mob. His lips part as if he planned to murder Harry with his mouth then drink his blood. 

The inside of Malfoy's lips on the tip of his cock produce the wettest, softest sensation Harry has ever felt. He has to screw his eyes shut to stop from crying out, but still his mouth frames the words: "Fuck, Malfoy!". Malfoy continues, wielding only his lips over the head, dragging them lightly over Harry's slit, teasing the hypersensitive skin of the crown with the slow, silky strokes. The occasional flick of his tongue sets off white flashes behind Harry's eyes. When he has Harry writhing violently with the slightest touch of his lips, he pulls back and shifts his weight onto one elbow. Harry holds his breath as his free hand traces over Harry's hip, then across his lower belly. With his fingers splayed over Harry's abdomen, his thumb strokes over the top of Harry's balls, making them clench tighter, and then around the base of his shaft. The intent, calculating way he does it makes Harry's cock twitch. He could come just from watching Malfoy stare at his cock, thoughtfully sucking on his lower lip. 

When Malfoy licks him from base to tip, Harry's hips lift clean off the mattress. Malfoy seems to appreciate that. He does it again and Harry makes sure not to disappoint him. 

Malfoy murmurs, "Like that, do you Potter?" 

"What do you think?" Harry snaps back, a little resentfully because Malfoy's voice has brought him back from a state of absolute surrender to the unwelcome reminder that the competition between them will never completely disappear. 

Malfoy doesn't pursue that but raises himself on his arm in a way that communicates clearly that his attentions to Harry's cock are done with. Harry manages to restrain himself to a heartfelt sigh. 

"Do you normally keep your clothes on?" Malfoy asks snidely. 

There is no "normally" but Harry can see the good sense in making more naked skin to press against Malfoy's, so he drags his shirt over his head while Malfoy leans back to watch approvingly as he struggles with his boots and trousers. It's distinctly odd, looking at his bare legs with Malfoy stretched out on the bed beside him. His limbs aren't his own under Malfoy's gaze. His calves strike him as stringy, the hair on them unkempt. But when Malfoy plants his hand in the middle of Harry's chest and pushes him down onto the mattress, Harry's thoughts become simple and urgent.

Malfoy's in no mood for making it easy, however. He leaves a quick, bruising kiss on Harry's mouth, bites his jaw for good measure and leans down to run his tongue over Harry's nipples. He focuses on the left, biting down gently, tugging and sucking. It's not only the attention-grabbing sensation that makes Harry try to thrust his whole body up into Malfoy's mouth. Just as arousing are the gentle, wet sounds he makes as he sucks, and the authoritative way that, each time he bites down, he presses the heel of his hand into Harry's cock. When he stops still and blows gently across the wet skin, Harry's pleasure is so focused on that one swollen nipple he could black out from sheer sensation.

"What shall I do to you next?" Malfoy murmurs into Harry's ear, and Harry has to clench his teeth together to stop himself answering with another amateurish moan. Malfoy misunderstands the silence and gets short with him. "I'm not offering an a-la-carte menu, you know. But you can ask if you want to. If you have a-"

Harry, who already misses the silky, wet touch of Malfoy's mouth, grips him hard behind the neck and kisses him. It's deeper than before and more intense with so much naked skin between them, and there's no mistaking how much Malfoy likes it. He kicks his way further up Harry's body to get their lips to meet properly and his tongue finds new depths in Harry's mouth. What's best is he manages to get their chests perfectly aligned. Every breath and every ripple of his muscles communicates down into Harry's ribs, nothing muffling the vibration from flesh to flesh and along their bones, and every inch of slippery skin glides together. Harry's eyes clench closed in unbearable tension. He's touching Malfoy's naked body in so many places he doesn't know which to appreciate first and Malfoy's erection is pulsing against his own. He wraps both his arms around Malfoy's neck and holds him there and keeps kissing him messily until they're both lightheaded.

"Your mouth," he manages to croak eventually.

"What about my mouth?" Malfoy pants, and applies that very organ to the soft skin under Harry's ear. 

"Please!" Harry is just dizzy enough for that word to slip out. "Put your mouth back ... Oh god, Malfoy, suck me."

Malfoy bites his earlobe and pauses, as if waiting to see if he'll say more.

"Disappointingly predictable," he mutters when no more pleas are forthcoming, but the words drip with smug satisfaction. Malfoy slithers down the bed and this time with no prevarication he parts his lips and takes the top half of Harry's shaft into his mouth.

Harry throws his head back and arches up like a man under torture. His hands wrench in the sheets. When Malfoy starts with the short, fast, greedy strokes of his mouth, his fist repeating the same rhythm around the base, there's absolutely no mistaking what he intends. Harry doesn't resist. He only has to look down at Malfoy's jaw stretched wide open around his shaft; the muscles across his shoulders jerking each time he sucks up and slides down Harry's cock, and instantly his orgasm hits him between the eyes. Malfoy swallows neatly and keeps on sucking. Harry is so transported by the intensity of it that he barely notices when Malfoy's rhythm slows and stops. His whole body is numb with pleasure.

Malfoy's voice brings him back from far away.

"Bad form, Potter," he says, his face suddenly close to Harry's and breathing come-scented breath all over him. "If you go to sleep now, I guarantee you will wake up dead."

Dragging his eyes open, he sentimentally brushes a lock of Malfoy's hair behind his ear. 

"Your turn," he says with a hazy smile. 

Not only Malfoy's expression but also the straining state of his erection disclose that what Malfoy needs is action, not promises, and certainly not sentiment. He cups Harry's hand within his and spits into Harry's palm. The simple, shameless gesture takes Harry's breath away. He doesn't need to be told what Malfoy wants. He wraps his fingers around Malfoy's cock, rougher than he should be, but Malfoy doesn't seem to mind. In fact, sometimes the soft whistling of breath over the roof of his mouth sounds like Malfoy might be saying _yes. Yes_ with his eyes focused on Harry's throat and the sweat starting to glisten on his forehead and neck, _yes_ as his stiff arms holding him up start to tremble with fatigue, _yes_ as Harry's grip tightens a little and Malfoy brutally bites his own lip. This is better, Harry thinks. This time he wants to watch Malfoy come undone. 

When Malfoy comes, his eyes drift closed as in the first slow blinks of sleep. There's a line between his eyebrows that Harry stupidly wants to smooth out. Harry strokes him harder as the first blast of come strikes his stomach, filthy, hot and new. Malfoy's teeth are bared and his eyes closed as he shoots helplessly, over and over, with that line between his eyebrows easing and then vanishing into blissful satisfaction.

Squeezed into the tiny space between Harry and the edge of the bed, Malfoy has to drape his chest slightly over Harry as he collapses. He spends a long time gasping into Harry's hair before he turns his face away. Harry gently swivels his wrist so that his fingertips are touching the head of Malfoy's cock. 

"Liked that, did you, Malfoy?" he asks, playful with post-orgasmic endorphins. Malfoy's messy breathing stops, then resumes in an orderly rhythm. He shifts onto his side and stares at Harry darkly. A tingle of anticipation starts at the base of Harry's spine. Malfoy trails his fingertips through the pooling come on Harry's stomach. When they're completely covered, he drags his fingers up Harry's chest and over his lips. Harry flicks a glance into Malfoy's intent, serious eyes and stretches out the tip of his tongue to lick his fingertips clean. Salty. Fleshy. Dirty. His eyes fall shut in sensual overload. The next time it's Malfoy's mouth that follows the same path. He leans over Harry with his lips glistening and a thick trickle of come running down his chin. Harry's cock throbs futilely. He puts his fingers on Malfoy's cheek and draws him down into a filthy, luxuriant kiss. 

Malfoy's kisses are quite deliberate, registers the tiny portion of Harry's brain that still works. He has all sorts of different speeds and moods. This one seems designed to make sure that the taste of his come is permanently imprinted all over the inside of Harry's mouth. Harry appreciates the unnecessary effort. His senses are so raw right now that the gentle stroke of Malfoy's tongue over his gums is probably as much as he can bear. 

Afterwards, he listens to the faint sounds Malfoy makes as he lies stretched out beside him, only their shoulders touching. His breathing is relaxed but not sleepy, and every time Malfoy swallows or scratches, Harry notices. If he'd had more time between the inception and the fulfilment of his rash desire, he might have fantasised about what sex with Malfoy would be like. He'd probably have pictured him as selfish and competitive and hopelessly regimented. He should have remembered that Malfoy only follows the rulebook as far as it suits him.

"You don't talk much anymore, Malfoy."

Malfoy kicks the tangled blanket off his legs and rolls away from him, toward the trapdoor. He takes a long time to find a comfortable position. Harry nudges Malfoy's bottom with his knuckles, to get his attention back. 

Eventually, Malfoy answers, "I work with goblins."

Harry takes a moment to think this over. 

"Only goblins?"

"Who do you think runs a goblin antique broking house? There's one other wizard. A local man called Cosimo who's been there since the middle ages, just about. There's only us and about twenty goblins doing the research and restoration, the onward sales and all the rest."

Harry, whose experience of goblins is limited to the officious disciplinarians in Gringotts, can't put a positive spin on that. "That's open-minded of you."

Malfoy laughs hard. With his body all loose from the sex, it's not his usual laugh but a musical, athletic sound. "You've still got those rose coloured glasses, haven't you? You want to see anti-Muggle sentiment, try the goblins. I take my hat off to them - they know how to hate. Why wouldn't they? They run one of the most profitable antique businesses in the country, but they still have to approach Muggle customers through an intermediary like me because technically they're not supposed to exist."

Harry isn't thinking about goblins, he's thinking about that laugh and wondering how to make Malfoy do it again. 

"They look down on everyone, Potter. Just like the giants, and the Dementors, and the mer-people and even your beloved Muggles. They really only like their own kind."

There's a maudlin note in that, and Harry decides to deal with it directly. He pulls the bedclothes off both of them. Since Malfoy is inclining his head away in a manner that suggests he doesn't want to be kissed again, Harry tries a more novel approach. He lays one hand over the side of Malfoy's ribcage and the other on his thigh and, between them, he leans down to bite gently at Malfoy's hip, making him squirm. As he encourages Malfoy gradually onto his back, his mouth moves inward and down. Unlike Malfoy, he won't try anything showy. He just takes Malfoy's cock as far into his mouth as he can get it and sucks gently. 

Under the sensitive flesh of his lips, he can feel the blood-filled flesh intimately as it heats and hardens. It's incredibly powerful to have another man's cock in his mouth. It's completely surreal to know that it's Malfoy's. He flicks his tongue a bit and feels Malfoy start to buck against him. He slips back into a slow, easy suction as Malfoy raises himself one elbows and winds the fingers of his free hand through Harry's hair, watching. 

"You look good like that," he murmurs.

"How's that?" Harry pulls back for a moment to gasp, though the answer isn't hard to guess.

"How do you think? Naked and messed up with your mouth wrapped around my cock."

Harry runs his teeth over the head of Malfoy's wonderfully hard cock and draws out a sharp breath. He uses the texture of the flat of his tongue to lick away the fluid collecting along the tip. 

"I've never done this before," he says suddenly. Malfoy's cock jerks against his nose. "You can ... if you want, you can ... you know. Tell me what you want."

"Less small talk," Malfoy tells him quickly, his voice a tiny bit shaky. He brushes back Harry's hair to give himself a better view. "Apart from that, just don't stop. Take as long as you like."

Harry does. He makes it loud and hungry, letting his lips smack wetly as they part and each time they rise up off Malfoy's cock. When he gives a small appreciative murmur with the head of Malfoy's cock pressed into his soft palate, Malfoy hisses and bucks into his mouth. Whether consciously or not, Malfoy strokes the back of Harry's head in mimicry of the rhythm he seems to need to get him off. Harry, inspired by tonight's revelation that sex can be nothing more than the whole-hearted exchange of pleasure, gives him exactly what he asks for.

Afterwards, as if to prove his superior experience, Malfoy spreads Harry's legs wide open, presses his whole face into Harry's cock and, with the tip of his nose and his tongue, his lush mouth, his teeth and two slick fingers, he demonstrates just how thorough a blow job can be. Coming down from a violently brilliant orgasm, Harry, who already was wondering whether he will ever be able to get aroused over a girl again, starts to hope the sun will rise soon, to stop him from taking this too far. 

Drowsy again, he watches the faint light in the slanted window. Some time ago their mouths got too raw to take much pleasure in kissing, but behind him, Malfoy occasionally drags his teeth over Harry's shoulder or reaches round to pinch a nipple and pull him back from sleep. 

"What do you want?" Harry slurs. 

Malfoy's fingers trail down his chest and dip into his navel. "Surely you can't object to a little more of the same?" 

Harry groans. "You'll kill me. Not now. Need sleep."

After three clumsy attempts, he manages to get the light extinguished wandlessly. Malfoy sighs and takes his hand back. He leaves their hips resting together, though. As Harry slips into unconsciousness, he can feel the slight swell of Malfoy's neglected arousal pressing against him.

He wakes in clear, grey light, to the extraordinary sensation of Malfoy's breath washing softly over the back of his neck. Harry holds himself very still, eyes closed, and focuses on the warmth of it. As he waits, Malfoy's breathing quickens, and his quiescent cock starts to heat up and harden against Harry's buttock. Wordlessly, Harry reaches back and takes hold of Malfoy's growing arousal. Malfoy moans sleepily and folds his fingers around Harry's, guiding his strokes into a firmer, deeper rhythm. Malfoy rests his forehead against the back of Harry's neck as he brings himself off. Later, he strokes Harry with his come-covered hand and Harry pulls back the sheets so he can watch Malfoy's slender fingers clenching hard around his cock. Malfoy watches too, with his chin on Harry's bicep and his breath coming fast, watches to see how Harry loses it completely when he murmurs, "I spent half of last night imagining doing this to you under the table". With a whimper bursting out of him, Harry strains his arm back to fist in Malfoy's hair and make their mouths meet and, about two seconds later, comes wrenchingly over the top of Malfoy's fist. 

The kiss goes on after his orgasm has left him. Lingering, lazy, bruised from the night before, their lips and tongues slide undemandingly together. When Harry finally drags himself away and swings his legs over the edge of the bed, he can feel Malfoy's gaze on his back.

He refuses to notice how Malfoy is still watching him as he washes himself down at the basin above the trapdoor, because every time he thinks of Malfoy he wants to throw himself back into the bed and start all over again. But he has to go. He has to get some space. Malfoy is leaving and he can't be clutching Malfoy's wrist as he walks into the international Floo hub this afternoon. 

When he's scrubbed enough to distract his thoughts from Malfoy's mouth, he puts his clothes on, pulls back the trapdoor and descends to let Malfoy dress in peace. 

He is standing in shadow at the base of the steep stairs when Malfoy starts to come down them with careful, stand-offish steps and his robes smoothed down into perfect neatness. He passes Harry without turning.

Harry clutches his wrist and pulls him back. Not terribly surprised, Malfoy stops and faces him. His hair is damp and his skin smells clean, except his mouth which, when he opens it, retains an enduring, wonderful scent of sex. It strains Harry's self-control not to kiss him again. 

Malfoy has no such hesitation. He winds his arms around Harry's waist and slips one hand onto his bottom and instantly brings Harry to the brink of begging him to come back up to the bedroom and stay. 

"No!" Harry groans and has to grab hold of Malfoy's forearm to stop him jerking indignantly away. He softens his voice, "Just not here."

"Where then?" Malfoy replies in an insinuating murmur that suggests he has in mind a broom closet or a dark alleyway or the foreign language section at Flourish and Blotts. Harry can't resist. Harry does kiss him this time, lightly but openly with their glasses keeping them apart. 

"Maybe in Turin," Harry grins as he turns away.

He's not sure what to make of the silence behind him as he climbs down the next flight of stairs. At the landing, he turns back. Malfoy is still standing exactly where Harry kissed him. His gaze is fixed on Harry but, with the morning's first sunlight filtering through the window above, his glasses are opaque mirrors in their gleaming silver frames. Malfoy's expression is entirely obscured. 

Harry finds something appropriate in that as he continues down the stairs, going back to a life that looks the same but isn't.

***

the end


End file.
